AJK police arrest suspected RAW agent in Rawalakot

Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) police claimed on Thursday that they had arrested a suspected agent of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in Rawalakot, who had been blackmailed into working for the foreign intelligence agency.

According to AJK Inspector General of Police (IGP) Liaqat Ali Malik, one suspect had been arrested who had allegedly been blackmailed into working for RAW.

His handler, whom Malik said used a Facebook account with an address in Lahore, blackmailed him by initially assigning “small tasks” — beginning with commonplace activities and later involving geotagging, sharing coordinates, and recording videos of “sensitive” sites, including military installations, schools, bridges and other government buildings in AJK and elsewhere in Pakistan.

“This time, the AJK police worked with sensitive institutions to take pre-emptive action and exposed this whole network,” Malik said, adding that the enemy forces had “trapped” innocent young people while causing damage to life and property.

According to the police, the method of blackmail involves the use of a fake account on social media to lure in targets, followed by the installation of malicious applications to record chats, intimate videos and pictures which are then used for blackmail purposes.

While the tasks start out at a small scale, they build up to more sensitive operations culminating in information gathering on sensitive military sites as well as civilian institutions that may be targeted, the IGP added.

He commended all police personnel and forces and paid tribute to them, saying that the police would go to “any length” for “this holy land” and would end the “enemy’s impure intentions”.

Prime Mini­ster Shehbaz Sharif has previously accu­sed India of using proxies to revive terrorism in Pakistan after its humiliating defeat in last year’s military conflict, and warned that peace in the region would remain elusive unless New Delhi abandoned its “aggressive, expansionist and hegemonic ambitions”.

In December of last year, the Punjab Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) claimed it had arrested 12 suspected militants allegedly working for RAW in intelligence-based operations conducted in Lahore, Faisalabad, and Bahawalpur.

In August, the CTD claimed that it had unearthed a RAW network which used Pakistanis and a separatist outfit in Sindh to carry out the targeted killing of a well-known soc­ial worker in Matli, Badin district.